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Posted by Nat on December 25, 2007, 3:30 pm
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to death for treachery. You pretended that you had seen a piece
of paper which proved them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed.
You invented it, and later you grew to believe in it. You remember now the
very moment at which you first invented it. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five
fingers. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb
concealed.
'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'
'Yes.'
And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his
mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then
everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the
bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment -- he
did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty,
when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness
and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as
easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before
O'Brien had dropped
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